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DAVIE, GEORGE TAYLOR, shipbuilder and politician; b. 3 March 1828 at Quebec, son of Allison Davie* and Elizabeth Johnson Taylor; m. 3 Sept. 1860 Mary Euphemia Patton in Lévis, Lower Canada, and they had two daughters and four sons; d. 1 Sept. 1907 in Lévis.
Until he was four years old George Taylor Davie lived in his parents' home at a rented shipyard on Rue de la Canoterie, Quebec; his father and maternal grandfather were partners in a shipbuilding concern there. The shipbuilding market was weak, so in 1832 the family moved across the St Lawrence River to Pointe-Lévy (Lévis), where Allison Davie had bought a beach property and had set up his own ship repair yard, equipped with a "patent slip" or marine railway. Since there was only one other dry-docking facility in the port of Quebec at the time, the Canada Floating Dock at Cape Cove, Davie's business prospered. In 1836, however, tragedy struck the family when he drowned in the river, leaving his widow with seven young children and an eighth soon to be born.
George Taylor was sent to Gale's Boarding School at Saint-Augustin, near Quebec, and remained there until he was old enough to learn the shipbuilding trade. He then had the good fortune to be apprenticed to John Munn*, Quebec's most prominent shipbuilder. During his term at Munn's shipyard in the faubourg Saint-Roch, he benefited from the high standard that Munn set in the construction of ships and from the presence there of Pierre Brunelle, another excellent shipbuilder. On completing his apprenticeship Davie was promoted yard foreman, and with that experience behind him, he was ready in 1850 to assume the direction of the family shipyard, which his mother had run for 14 years with some help from her ailing father.
In setting up a repair yard, Allison Davie had made a wise move, for although the demand for new ships fluctuated, the need for ship maintenance and repairs was always present. George, who had become well aware of the possibilities of steam navigation, was not content to pursue the ship repair trade alone, and he entered the fields of salvage, of building and operating steamboats, and, when the market was strong, of construction of sailing ships as well. It was in salvage, or wrecking as it was known, that he achieved his greatest success, often undertaking jobs on a "no cure, no pay" basis and earning a reputation on both sides of the Atlantic for his mastery of the trade.
In 1860 Elizabeth Davie passed away, and her seven surviving children inherited the shipyard in equal parts. Three years later, George and his brothers, Allison, Gershom, and William, bought out their sisters. By 1870, however, Allison had died, and Gershom and William, who were becoming increasingly involved in the operation of steamboats, agreed to sell George their shares. It had taken him 20 years to achieve sole ownership of the yard and, with the future of his four boys to consider, this independence had no doubt been his goal for some time.
In the early 1850s he had increased the dry-docking facilities at the yard by the addition of a floating wooden dock and in 1872 he purchased a second, larger one, 240 by 54 feet, in which he would be able to accept larger ships. He brought the handling of these simple, box-like structures to a fine art, docking vessels of over 250 feet. But at the beginning of the 1880s, with both more and larger metal ships on the river, he found himself at a disadvantage in two ways: not only was even his large dock too small, but he lacked the equipment to do more than temporary repairs to metal-hulled ships. Although he had ploughed every cent of profit back into the shipyard, business reversals and the fact that he had had to buy out his siblings had prevented him from building up capital needed for expansion. The federal government, however, was in the process of solving his first problem by building the Lorne Dry Dock at Lauzon (Lévis). The second problem was solved after part of his shipyard was expropriated for the passage of a railway. He used the compensation he received to buy from his mother-in-law, Mary Patton, approximately 100 acres of land on the river front at Lauzon strategically situated immediately beside the dry dock. At the time of the purchase in 1882, there remained on the property an old sawmill which his father-in-law, timber merchant Duncan Patton, had operated, and two building slips where Pierre Brunelle had once built sailing ships for Patton. It was the ideal site for establishing an up-to-date facility, and Davie seized the opportunity to do so in 1885 when the cargo steamer Titania was stranded on Anticosti Island. Having floated the steamer, he beached it in Indian Cove (Anse aux Sauvages), Lauzon. After arranging for the construction of a machine shop at the shipyard, he left for England, and returned with the foreman who had built the vessel and a team of skilled metalworkers. The Titania was the first ship to enter the Lorne Dry Dock. Repairs were carried out and most of the men returned to England. Some remained, however, to become the backbone of the new shipyard's workforce and to train local workers, who readily adapted to the new techniques in metal shipbuilding. In the meantime, a larger machine shop was built, incorporating the original one, and Davie's new yard was soon well equipped and well established. He continued to use the first yard at Lévis for the repair and wintering of smaller vessels.
During his lifetime, Davie owned and operated several salvage schooners and tugs, the best known being the two schooners named GTD, which, besides having room to store gear and provisions and accommodation for the crew and workers, were equipped as floating machine shops. The early tugs such as the Rambler were built at the Lévis shipyard, but with the increase in the size of ships, there was a need for greater power, so first the Lord Stanley and then the Lord Strathcona were built in Britain to his specifications.
Davie played an active role in the communities of Lévis and Quebec, serving for many years as a director of the Quebec and Levis Ferry Company Limited and the Chinic Hardware Company Limited, as well as a director and, for a few years, president of the Quebec Steamship Company. He was a member of the St George's Society and a freemason. In addition, he represented Lauzon ward on the town council of Lévis for three terms: August 1861 to January 1862, January 1875 to January 1882, and January 1886 to January 1889. He was regular in his attendance at council meetings and served on various committees. On controversial issues he frequently voted with the majority.
As Davie's career wound to a close, he made plans for his four sons to take over the business. Charles McCarthy, who was expected to become the plant manager, began in the traditional way as an apprentice at the Lauzon yard. John Leavitt, who had a natural affinity for drafting, was encouraged to develop his skills, while Allison Cufaude acted as his father's secretary and also handled the books. George Duncan, the youngest, served his time in the machine shops of the Carrier, Laîné et Compagnie foundry in Lévis [see Charles William Carrier*], becoming a mechanic; he then joined his uncle William Davie, who was George's mainstay in the wrecking department of the business. Davie's plans were confounded, however, when Charles was killed in a shipyard accident. But even in his loss, he was fortunate that there remained three sons, and in 1897 he felt that the time had come to pass both his shipyards on to them in equal parts in exchange for an annual pension. Hull No.1, soon to become the paddle-steamer Champion, the first vessel laid down by the Davies at the Lauzon shipyard, was on the stocks a month away from her launching date when the deed was signed and the younger Davies took over the shipyard. From then on Davie remained in the background, always ready to give advice. He continually strove to persuade the government to pass laws that would protect Canadian shipbuilding, but with little success despite the general respect in which he was held both by the business community at large and by those in the trade. The large attendance at his funeral was a measure of the esteem in which he was held. He was buried in the family plot at Mount Hermon Cemetery, Sillery, beside his son Charles and brother Gershom. Only in death did religion come between him and his wife. Their marriage had taken place in St Andrew's Presbyterian Church, Lévis, which their sons later attended, but Mary was a Catholic and he had agreed that their daughters be brought up in her faith. She was buried beside her parents in the Catholic cemetery in Lévis.
Of all the 19th-century shipyards on the St Lawrence, only the Davie shipyard at Lauzon has survived. Now under the name of MIL Davie Incorporated, it boasts more than a century in the ship repair trade and almost a century in shipbuilding. During that time over 700 commercial and naval vessels of all sizes, including the largest vessels ever to have been laid down in Canada, have slid down the ways, each one a small tribute to the vision of George Taylor Davie.
The author, Eileen Reid Marcil, is preparing a history of the Davie shipyards in which G. T. Davie figures prominently.
ANQ-Q, CE1-66, 10 mars 1828; CE1-76, 10 sept. 1860, 4 sept. 1907; CN1-290, 30 sept. 1870, 22 déc. 1882; CN1-51, 6 nov. 1872; CN1-150, 11 juill. 1863. Arch. de la Ville de Lévis, Qué., Procès-verbaux, 1861–89. NA, RG 42, E1. Private arch., Eileen Reid Marcil (Charlesbourg, Que.), "Le chantier Davie à Lévis" (typescript, 1988). Le Canadien, 10 juin 1836. Quebec Chronicle, 2, 5 Sept. 1907. Quebec Gazette, 10 Oct. 1860. I. S. Brookes, The lower St. Lawrence: a pictorial history of shipping and industrial development (Cleveland, Ohio, [1974]). G. W. Haws, The Haws family and their seafaring kin (Dunfermline, Scot., 1932). Eileen Reid Marcil, "Shipbuilding at Quebec, 1763–1893: the square rigger trade" (phd thesis, Univ. Laval, Quebec, 1987).
© 1994–2024 University of Toronto/Université Laval
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Eileen Reid Marcil, "DAVIE, GEORGE TAYLOR," in Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 13, University of Toronto/Université Laval, 2003–, accessed February 24, 2024, http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/davie_george_taylor_13E.html.
The citation above shows the format for footnotes and endnotes according to the Chicago manual of style (16th edition). Information to be used in other citation formats:
Permalink: | http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/davie_george_taylor_13E.html |
Author of Article: | Eileen Reid Marcil |
Title of Article: | DAVIE, GEORGE TAYLOR |
Publication Name: | Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 13 |
Publisher: | University of Toronto/Université Laval |
Year of publication: | 1994 |
Year of revision: | 1994 |
Access Date: | February 24, 2024 |


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Transient elastometry (Fibroscan®) appears not to be applicable in HIV monoinfected patients with elevated liver function tests
Transiente Elastometrie mittels Fibroscan® scheint bei HIV-monoinfizierten Patienten mit erhöhten Leberwerten nicht anwendbar zu sein
Suche in Medline nach
Veröffentlicht: | 2. Juni 2010 |
Introduction: Elevated liver function tests (eLFT) in HIV monoinfected patients (pts) have been previously reported, caused by several medical conditions such as hepatic steatosis, non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH), nodular regenerative hyperplasia or drug toxicity. These conditions may lead to liver fibrosis and, consecutively, to end-stage liver disease or portal hypertension. The best method to stage liver disease in those pts has not yet been established.
Methods: We performed transient elastometry (Fibroscan®), liver biopsy, and laboratory analysis in HIV- and HCV infected pts as well as in pts with HIV/HCV coinfection seen in our outpatient liver unit. Fibroscan results over 7kPa were considered as significant fibrosis (Metavir F2-F4).
Results: 31 pts were included (mean age 45years, range 29-63, 24 male, 8 female, HCV n=12, HIV/HCV n=11, HIV n=8). The three groups (HCV, HIV/HCV, HIV) were comparable with regard to age, HIV and HCV viral load and standard laboratory markers. The predominant HCV genotype was 1 (89%). BMI was higher in HCV infected pts (25, 22 and 20 kg/m2, respectively). LIver biopsy size was 22, 21 and 15mm, respectively. The percentage of pts with significant hepatic steatosis (more than 10%) was 33%, 22% and 38%, respectively.
Fibroscan® showed consistently higher results compared to liver biopsy in HIV monoinfected pts. Assessment of significant fibrosis by transient elastometry was concordant with the liver biopsy in only 25% of cases in this group, while being 73% for HCV infected pts and 45% for HCV/HIV coinfected pts.
No difference was found for markers of insulin resistance or inflammation, such as interleukin-6, d-dimers or CRP between the three groups.
APRI score was significantly higher in the HIV monoinfected group (1.35, 0.98, and 1.64, respectively).
Conclusion: Elevated liver function tests in HIV monoinfected patients are caused by several reasons. Classical methods to assess the stage of liver disease do not seem to be applicable for this group of patients.
Our ongoing clinical database showed a trend that HIV monoinfected patients with elevated LFTs may be falsly overestimated by non-invasive fibrosis assessment with Fibroscan® or APRI score. Further studies will be needed to identify possible causes of this phenomenon which might help to alterate the established algorithms in order to apply to this group of pts.

subset: commoncrawl


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ST. LOUIS -- Albert Pujols sued Jack Clark on Friday over comments on a local radio show accusing the three-time NL MVP of using steroids.
The lawsuit between former Cardinals stars was filed in Circuit Court in St. Louis County, where Pujols lives. It seeks unspecified damages that would be donated to charity, and asks for a determination and declaration that Clark's statements are false.
The petition says Pujols' "character and reputation are impeccable and beyond reproach" and cites his charitable work with the Pujols Family Foundation, while calling Clark "a struggling radio talk show host" who was chasing ratings in the first week his new show was on the air.
Pujols, a nine-time All-Star, played for the Cardinals from 2001-11, then left to sign a $240 million, 10-year contract with the Los Angeles Angels.
"My lawyers have told me that the upcoming legal fight will not be an easy one, and that in cases like this even a liar can sometimes be protected under the law," Pujols said in a statement. "I have never shied away from standing up for the truth, and I believe that the principles at stake are too important to sit back and do nothing."
"I believe we are all accountable for the things we do and say, and it was important for me to stand up for what was right against those who would seek to drag me down to try and build themselves up," he said.
The lawsuit came one day after three-time AL MVP Alex Rodriguez sued Major League Baseball and Commissioner Bud Selig in New York for alleged interference with his current and prospective business deals. Rodriguez has a $275 million, 10-year contract with the New York Yankees, the only baseball deal larger than Pujols' agreement.
Clark played for the Cardinals from 1985-87 and was a four-time All-Star. He made the comments on Aug. 2 on WGNU-AM radio's "The King and the Ripper Show," saying he knew "for a fact" that Pujols used steroids and performance enhancing drugs. He called Pujols "a juicer" and made similar on-air comments three days later.
Clark and his co-host on the program, Kevin Slaten, were fired a week into their tenure, and the station's owner broadcast a lengthy apology and posted similarly contrite statements on its website. The lawsuit does not name the radio station or Slaten as defendants.
Clark, who played 18 seasons for five teams, was the Los Angeles Dodgers' hitting coach from 2001-03. He said on the air that Pujols' personal trainer, Chris Mihlfeld, disclosed that he "shot up" the young player and also offered Clark steroids. Mihlfeld, who also worked for the Dodgers at the time and first met Pujols as his junior college coach, has publicly denied those accusations. The suit references a Mihlfeld statement that Clark's allegations are "simply not true."
The lawsuit says Clark's comments are lies that have damaged Pujols' reputation, causing him humiliation, mental anguish and anxiety. It calls the statements "malicious, reckless and outrageous falsehoods" and said Clark's firing and the show's cancellation don't go far enough.
"Cutting Clark off at the microphone will not undo the harm to Pujols' reputation caused by Clark," the suit says.
On Aug. 10, Clark tweeted: "I completely stand by the story I told 8 days ago about conversations 13 years ago w/ Mihlfeld. He will never admit it."
Clark's attorney, Chet Pleban, said he had not yet seen the lawsuit but Clark "looks forward to having his day in court and having 12 unbiased, impartial people decide the issues."
"And we'll certainly look forward to the discovery process, that will include depositions and the like," he said.
Pleban said Pujols has a "multiplicity of legal hurdles to overcome" to meet the actual malice standard in libel cases brought by public officials -- specifically showing that Clark made a knowingly false statement or with reckless disregard for the truth.
Soon after Clark's comments, Pujols adamantly denied using performance-enhancing drugs, citing his desire to be a role model for his five children and the necessity of being "the athlete to carry the torch and pave the way for other innocent players" by challenging Clark in court.
On Friday, one of the five lawyers he has hired to fight Clark said in a written statement that should Pujols prevail in court, he would donate any monetary damages to charity. Los Angeles attorney Lynda Goldman said Pujols also expects an apology from Clark.


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Liberals in Congress and in the general public have allowed their blind devotion to Obama obscure their understanding of the dramatic parallels between this administration and the previous one. Obama's high-minded idealistic rhetoric (which Bush also engaged in, it should be pointed out) may sound great to establishment liberals, but it masks the same contempt for the rule of law that was displayed so often in the Bush imperial presidency. Now, Obama's contempt for the Constitution is on display for all to see, although many will not like what they see.
Nowhere is this contempt for the highest laws of the land clearer than in Obama's complete refusal to protect basic due process rights for alleged terrorists and detainees in the "War on Terror." Case in point: Obama's commitment to illegally detain American citizens under the name of fighting terrorism (more on this in a bit).
Before getting into Obama's most recent attacks on the Constitution, I should note that they are part of a larger historical pattern of contempt for basic civil liberties. Count among Obama's previous transgressions: 1. The decision to refrain from prosecuting the Bush administration for its many violations of the law, including the NSA wiretaps scandal, the Guantanamo-enemy combatant fiasco, the systematic lying about the reasons for war in Iraq, and the willful skirting of the Geneva Conventions as seen in the Abu Ghraib scandal, among other deceptions; 2. The decision to continue using rendition, where terrorist suspects would be sent to third world dictatorships to be interrogated, coupled with the absurd promise that these governments would no longer torture detainees (as they did under Bush), because the new interrogations were in service of the noble and selfless Obama, unlike Bush, who was a bad, bad man; and 3. Obama's expanded "War on Terror" as seen in the Afghan surge, which would have been protested endlessly if it occurred under the Bush administration.
The Los Angeles Times' reporting in early 2009 perfectly symbolized the naiveté of liberal aspirations for the president, as the paper reported on Obama's tortured promise (no pun intended) that the CIA would continue to use rendition, but that foreign interrogators simply wouldn't torture anymore. Such a promise was outlandish on the face of it, since the whole point behind rendition is to outsource torture to allied governments which are better able to hide their use of torture in interrogations (this was the lesson learned at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, and Bagram, where U.S. interrogators were eventually implicated in coercive interrogations and torture).
As the LA Times optimistically reported at the time of Obama's inauguration: "The CIA's secret prisons are being shuttered. Harsh interrogation techniques are off-limits. And Guantanamo Bay will eventually go back to being a wind-swept naval base on the southeastern corner of Cuba…Under executive orders issued by Obama recently, the CIA still has authority to carry out what are known as renditions, secret abductions and transfers of prisoners to countries that cooperate with the United States. Current and former U.S. intelligence officials said that the rendition program might be poised to play an expanded role going forward because it was the main remaining mechanism… for taking suspected terrorists off the street." The LA Times continued: "Obama created a task force to reexamine renditions to make sure that they 'do not result in the transfer of individuals to other nations to face torture,' or otherwise circumvent human rights laws and treaties. The CIA has long maintained that it does not turn prisoners over to other countries without first obtaining assurances that the detainees will not be mistreated." Such naiveté was no doubt embraced by Obama supporters who wanted to believe that Obama could never engage in the kind of torture of detainees that so regularly characterized the actions of the Bush administration.
Now Obama appears to be ready to strengthen his contempt for the rule of law via his expansion of the enemy combatant system, while slyly refusing to refer to those detained as "enemy combatants." Much was made of Obama's initial attempts (in 2009) to shut down Guantanamo and send detainees there to U.S. civilian courts, where they would be granted basic due process rights. That plan was shut down by Democrats in Congress, which have long displayed their basic distaste for basic Constitutional and other legal protections for "terrorist suspects." Obama kowtowed to Congressional criminality in 2009, and is set to do it again this year. As the New York Times recently reported, Obama has now abandoned his promise to veto the "military authorization bill" being considered in Congress, which threatens to extend denial of due process to American citizens who are suspected of terrorist activities. Let me repeat that in case you missed it: Obama has now gone on record as openly supportive of denying American citizens (not only non-citizens) basic due process rights such as the right to trial, trial by peers, and right to legal representation.
As the New York Times reports: "The administration had threatened to veto versions of the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012 passed by the House and the Senate, arguing that provisions would open the door for the military to perform policing functions inside the United States…But the bill includes a narrower provision, drafted by the Senate, authorizing the government to detain, without trial, suspected members of Al Qaeda or its allies — or those who 'substantially supported' them — bolstering the authorization it enacted a decade ago against the perpetrators of the Sept. 11 attacks…Another section would require officials to hold noncitizens suspected of being Qaeda operatives in military custody."
Of course, the traditionally slavish U.S. media spared Americans the worst details of the new legislation. The Guardian reports that the new law potentially "allows the military to indefinitely detain without trial American terrorism suspects arrested on US soil who could then be shipped to Guantánamo Bay." Neither of these details was acknowledged in the New York Times' report on the National Defense Authorization Act, to the delight of the Obama administration.
It's truly tragic and sad that this "debate" over circumvention of basic rights granted in the Constitution has to be replayed yet again in the United States. The Bush administration was rightly condemned for its complete contempt for the Constitution, but American liberals seem content to ignore these same transgressions when engaged in by Democrats.
For the record, there is nothing remotely controversial about the conclusion that denying citizens and non-citizens alike basic due process rights in civilian courts is illegal under national and international law. As the Supreme Court ruled in the 2004 case of Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, military tribunals for terrorist suspects clearly violate basic protections granted under the Geneva Conventions, which require that suspects be tried in "regularly constituted courts." A regularly constituted court is widely understood to be the equivalent of a civilian court, conferring within it basic protections to confront accusers, benefit from a trial of one's peers, and to be protected against hearsay, majority (rather than unanimous voting), and to confidential attorney-client privileges. All of these protections are circumvented in military tribunals, which afford a far lower level of basic protections to the accused. Such due process protections carry the force of domestic law, in light of the fact that the Geneva Conventions are U.S. ratified foreign treaties, and are protected under the Constitution's "supremacy clause," which places foreign treaties on par with national laws and the Constitution itself as the highest form of law in the land. The Supreme Court also found that the Geneva Conventions protections for non-citizens (to have access to a trial in a civilian court) were protected via the Uniform Military Code of Justice, which also incorporates basic Geneva Conventions protections.
The outlawing of the "enemy combatant" designation and the indefinite detainment of non-citizens was also reinforced in the Supreme Court's 2004 Hamdi vs. Rumsfeld decision, which declared the Bush administration's detainment of terrorist suspects at Guantanamo to be illegal and unconstitutional. The Constitution states explicitly in the 6th Amendment that: "In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury… and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence." Critics will no doubt point out that the 6th Amendment refers to basic protections granted to those who are charged with crimes allegedly committed within (rather than outside) the United States. This criticism is irrelevant, however, with regard to the new legislation being considered in Congress, which is set to apply to American citizens and their (alleged) illegal activities committed on U.S. soil. Furthermore, the Constitution does not distinguish between citizens and non-citizens in the case of alleged crimes and due process rights, as addressed in the Fifth Amendment, which explicitly states that "no person [rather than no citizen]…shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law." This provision essentially makes illegal and unconstitutional any attempts by presidents or congress to deny basic due process to citizens and non-citizens.
Obama's lawless infringements on basic Constitutional principles are (fortunately) opposed by a strong majority of Americans, who still maintain a commitment to the rule of law. Polling on the denial of due process is in short supply, but what little evidence exists suggests strong rejection of the circumvention of the Constitution. A 2006 poll published by the Program on International Policy Attitudes, for example, uncovers the following findings:
– 73 percent of Americans believe terrorism "suspects should have the right to request and receive a hearing."
– 66 percent think that the "home government and families [of detainees] should be informed of their capture and location."
– 73 percent feel that detainees "treatment should be monitored by the Red Cross or another international organization" to ensure that they are treated humanely
– 75 percent (contrary to Obama's reliance on rendition and torture) feel that detainees "should not be tortured," while 57 percent think that detainees "should not be threatened with torture."
– 63 percent agree that "the rules for treating someone who is being detained because they are suspected of terrorist activities should be the same for citizens and non-citizens."
– 57 percent feel "the United States should not permit U.S. military and intelligence agencies to secretly send terrorism suspects to other countries that are known to use torture."
– 78 percent believe that it would be "somewhat" or "very likely" that these suspects "were tortured even if officials [as Obama has done today] say they would not be."
American majority sentiment is very clearly opposed to the Obama administration's continuation of the illegal attacks on the Constitution and basic due process rights. We have an opportunity today to send a message to our members of Congress that denial of due process is unacceptable regardless of the party of the president. Simply because Congress decides to initiate illegal acts doesn't mean that they are any less unconstitutional. Political elites may have no interest in this basic lesson, but that doesn't mean that Americans have to accept such draconian, authoritarian arguments. I strongly urge all those committed to the rule of law to contact their legislators in the House and Senate and urge them strongly to vote no against the authorization of the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act.
To look up your members of Congress, see the following links:
For the House of Representatives: http://www.house.gov/representatives/find/
For the Senate: http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm
Anthony DiMaggio is the author of numerous books, including most recently The Rise of the Tea Party, and other works such as Crashing the Tea Party (2011); When Media Goes to War (2010); and Mass Media, Mass Propaganda (2008). He has taught American politics and International Relations in Political Science at a number of colleges and universities, and can be reached at: email@example.com


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December 11, 2012 ☼ censorship ☼ competitive intolerance ☼ free speech ☼ freedom of expression ☼ information age ☼ internal security ☼ liberal nationalism ☼ liberty ☼ Public Policy ☼ radically networked societies ☼ Security
This is an archived blog post from The Acorn.
This is the unedited draft of my guest column in this week's India Today.
Let us not underestimate the importance and the challenge of maintaining public safety and national security in a diverse, heterogenous society undergoing rapid change. Over the last three decades, riding furiously on the politics of identity and the economics of entitlement, an arms race of competitive intolerance has rent Indian society. It is frequently accompanied by coercion, intimidation or violence.
Unfortunately, where one citizen's intolerance collides with another's right to free speech, the agents of the Indian republic cravenly side with the former. This is the context in which our police, intelligence agencies and security forces are tasked with the job of maintaining domestic peace. As important as their job is—for internal stability is the basis for growth and development—they are under-staffed, under-equipped, under-trained and inappropriately organised for the task. To an extent, therefore, it is understandable that the security establishment prefers to err on the side of caution, and seeks as much statutory leeway as possible in laws concerning free speech and civil liberties.
It is understandable, yes, but no longer acceptable. Even before large numbers of Indians acquired mobile phones and got onto the internet, our unreformed, colonial approach to policing had created a yawning gap of disaffection between police and citizen, establishment and society, the state and the individual. The information age has exacerbated this gap, creating extreme pressures on both sides. If left unchecked, such pressures could explode in many ways, most of which spell trouble for our democratic republic.
The traditional method of maintaining what is popularly known as "law and order" involves rationing information. It presumes that information is a scarce commodity like it used to be half-a-century ago. Censorship could prevent the masses from obtaining information that the authorities didn't want them to. Books could be banned and their import restricted. Sensitive installations could be protected by preventing accurate maps from being published. Even when government documents weren't classified, there was little chance that citizens would ever have access to them.
This is no longer tenable because information is no longer scarce. Traditional methods might still fetch tactical, short-term successes, but at the cost of creating strategic, long-term damage. Cutting off SMS services in Srinagar might put the brakes on the spread of a riot but adds another layer of grievance to an already disaffected population. In most cases it simply doesn't work. Censorship can be circumvented inexpensively, banned books downloaded easily and many official documents accessed through the Right to Information.
That's not all. By keeping blunt laws that were designed for ease of use by unreformed police forces, we do not create any incentives for smarter policing. Draconian laws are bad for the police. They are obviously bad for society. The disconnect they create between the two is bad for the Indian republic.
The recent arrest of the two young women in Palghar, Maharashtra under draconian provisions of the IT Act and the Indian Penal Code, and the subsequent government action against the policemen involved, demonstrates this. The only winners in that episode were the intolerant.
Instead of persisting with the increasingly counterproductive approach of rationing information, a better way would be for the government to manage its abundance. There is nothing stopping the government from putting timely, accurate information online. From traffic updates to weather, from law and order situations to authoritative updates on details of the operations of our security forces. When the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) published tweets and videos of their recent combat operation in near real-time, they ensured that their narrative prevailed over the usual confusion and misinformation that the fog-of-war creates. There are lessons here for our Home Affairs and Defence ministries.
Similarly, law enforcement authorities can keep their fingers on the zeitgeist and intervene with factual information in real time. Some are already doing this. The state police in Jammu & Kashmir have made good use of Facebook. Last month, the Ministry of Defence and Army Headquarters put out their version of the story even while Arvind Kejriwal was making allegations—concerning non-payment of emoluments to a NSG commando—at a press conference. This method can be used to good effect during times when there are malefactors spreading rumours online. Good information is the best way to counter bad information, obviating the need to block social media, ban websites and suspend telecom services.
Law enforcement authorities must have the powers to ensure public safety and order. However, the Policeman cannot be the arbiter of free speech. It is a mistake to ask police officers to develop the sophisticated sense to appreciate the finer nuances of what is acceptable speech. What we must do as part of a larger project of police reform is equip our law enforcement authorities with information management skills necessary to do their basic job—protecting our liberty—better.
© Copyright 2003-2024. Nitin Pai. All Rights Reserved.


text: The Valles Marineris is a system of canyons located just south of the Martian equator. The system is about 4000 km long, and, if on earth, would extend all the way across the United States. In places the canyon floor reaches a depth of 10 km, 6 to 7 times deeper than the Grand Canyon.


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I own an Android. You own an Android. Heaps of people own Androids. But apparently 99 per cent of them can be easily attacked, every time we log into a website on an unsecured network.
This is according to researchers at the University of Ulm, in Germany, who found that any phones running a version of Android prior to 2.3.3 are vulnerable to an attack thanks to a weak ClientLogin authentication protocol. Any time an Android user signs into a service such as Twitter, Facebook or a new Google account, the authToken information is stored for 14 days, and accessible if you know how to go about it, claim the researchers:
"To collect such authTokens on a large scale an adversary could setup a wifi access point with a common SSID (evil twin) of an unencrypted wireless network, e.g., T-Mobile, attwifi, starbucks…With default settings, Android phones automatically connect to a previously known network and many apps will attempt syncing immediately. While syncing would fail (unless the adversary forwards the requests), the adversary would capture authTokens for each service that attempted syncing."
The team feigned an attack, and found it was "quite easy to do so". Gulp. The reason 99 per cent of the Android handsets in existence are said to be vulnerable to such an attack? It's because any phone not running Android 2.3.4, which Google released a few weeks ago, hasn't had the security hole patched yet.
While a fix from Google would solve this problem, Android users are recommended to only use ClientLogin on https sites for now. [Uni-Ulm via The Register]


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A bootleg of the after-credits scene of Fast and Furious 6 has leaked online via youtube! This scene is the much awaited bridge to Fast and Furious Tokyo Drift, you may watch it below:
Fats and Furious 6 – After credits scene
The scene definitely takes place in Tokyo in Japan, and Ian Shaw (played by Jason Statham) just killed Han (played by Sung Kang)!
Dom (Vin Diesel) doesn't know Ian, but he's about to in Fast and Furious 7:
Fast and Furious 7 Movie – Diesel vs Statham!
Who's going to win that one? Vin Diesel or Jason Statham? Who do you root for?
Fast and Furious 7 will hit theaters on July 11, 2014.


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Nev's question today is:
What's your favorite niche market & why
There are so many niche markets to dabble in. For a long time, a blacksmith comrade of mine sold rods. They were needed only by mages, to enchant to create the next level of enchantments. A mage needed seven or eight over their whole career. Very niche, so most blacksmiths didn't bother making them. Copper rods, then silver rods, ..., then eternium rods, then ...., and then Blizzard removed them.
My banker's minion used to buy horde snakes and other pets from the Blackwater Auction House for resale on the Alliance AH, and in return sold Exodar moths. Now they're shared across your family and half the world has 9 of each to sell.
I always keep a few spellthreads for lower levels. Sapphire Spellthread, for instance, sells in small numbers, but at 200g. I always keep a few low-level spellthreads on the AH. Often I've no competition. Various low level enchantments are also good sellers. I suppose most of these are twink items for PvP at various levels.
If there is just one niche market for me, it would be cooking recipes, I suppose. I know where to find them, I know what they're worth, and I enjoy selling them. The ones that are awkward to attain (such as most Outland recipes) sell well, because of the hassle of getting hem from their vendor. The buyer is paying for the convenience, just as you might buy a ready-prepared meal rather than buying the ingredients and making it yourself. It takes a little bit of showmanship to sell the really rare ones, recipes that have been removed from the game. Here, bored trade scrubs really help without realizing it. If you can troll them, they'll be talking for half an hour about how stupid it would be to buy your recipe, and how stupid you are for trying to sell it at that outrageous price, all the while allowing you to advertise it and make the case for why it is expensive.
A challenge at the moment is to know whether to sell or keep the Desolace recipes from Gizelton's caravan. Are they coming back or not? Everyone seems sure that they are. I'm not so sure. They were deliberately rare in order to introduce a bit of a challenge to collectors and achievers. Maybe the recipes won't return until the caravan can be returned. And maybe that will take a bit of time. Maybe Blizzard will decide to move them to other vendors. Will they be easier to find? Maybe Blizzard will just quietly drop them. Who can tell? The fun is in trying to read the tea-leaves to set the correct price. And to be in on it in the first place. One thing is certain. Their current price is wrong. Either the few remaining recipes are the last we will ever see, in which case 50000g is not a bad price, or they will appear on an existing vendor, in which case 100g will be the best price for them. In my opinion Blizzard is not going to bring back the caravan just for three recipes. They've more important things to do. Look, they already deliberately got rid of the Recipe: Sporeling Snack. They won't mind losing these ones. But the opposite opinion is just as valid!
Rare items, such as the rare cooking recipes, are best sold through trade chat. Buyers need to be educated into seeing the value of rarity. An rud is annamh is iontach - what is rare is wonderful, as the saying goes in Gaelic. Education is a long-term project, and it took me a while to appreciate why people bought rare recipes. A common reason put forward by the trade scrubs was to complete an achievement and whenever I'd list a rare recipe, for instance my favourite,the rarest Dirge's Kickin' Chimaerok Chops, scrubs would first be laughing at why anybody would want a meal that only gave +25 stamina, and then they'd be telling everyone how you could get the Iron Chef achievement without it. But the real reason collectors want it has nothing to do with achievements. It is simply to possess a rare recipe. Just like nobody buys a Penny Black or a Treskilling Yellow just to post a letter, or to complete their 10,000-stamp collection. They buy them to have something rare. Something that only they have.
There are other very rare items in the game. I'd love to get an education and move beyond cooking recipes. But they've been such fun!
Part of the 20 days of Gold Making series
Social Climbing
So much has happened in *Nightingale *since I last posted about what I've
been doing there, I hardly know where to begin. I suppose I really ought to
10 hours ago


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This lack of craft doesn't have to be so, and anyone who puts a little time and thought into it can probably beat out the typical Black Eyed Peas lyrics (who are very good at lyrical hooks, but less so with the rest). Robin Yokiko recently wrote a great article regarding the 10 Tips For Better Lyric Writing on the Music Clout blog. Here they are:
"1. Have a theme. Themes don't make your lyrics boring, they make them cohesive. Think of "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" and its whimsical sky references (clouds, birds, stars, chimney tops). It's about world-building that sweeps the listener away.
2. Try to stay away from perfect rhymes. Day and way. Run, fun, sun. They sometimes ring as childish, especially if the context is not interesting enough. Be more adventurous and less strict (fade and wait, mine and kind, crazy and maybe, etc.).
3. Make the context interesting. If you are singing the same old love song, say it in a different way. Build from real memories, real conversation, or unusual metaphors.
4. Put the rhymes in unusual places (internal rhymes, in the middle of phrases). It adds meat to the bones of your song.
5. Change up the rhyme scheme. An example from Pat Pattison, "Mary had a little lamb, fleece was white as snow. And everywhere that Mary went, she sold the fleece to pay the rent."
6. Put the emphasis on the right syllable. As much as I love Alanis Morissette, she has an annoying habit of misplacing accents, making it incredibly awkward and difficult to understand ("an un-for-TU-nate slight," instead of "un-FOR-tu-nate" in "Uninvited"). If you are dead-set on a lyric that stresses the wrong syllable, don't be afraid to change the rhythm to set it right. You can also add or take away unimportant words like "that" or separating contractions. Personally, I know a lyric is right when it sounds as if I could speak it naturally.
7. Make your choruses more general than your verses. This is not a hard rule, but it helps to "change scenes" after your verse.
8. Be ruthless about clichés. Speak your lyrics aloud to spot them. When you find them (and you probably will), try changing only one word to something unexpected.
9. Keep writing different versions of the same section. You can always go back to the original, but you never know what you'll come up with on try #5.
10. Don't be afraid of the tools in your arsenal. Get a thesaurus. And a rhyming dictionary. Even if you don't use the words you find, they can sometimes inspire other ideas. So can novels, newspapers, facebook updates, and people-watching."
Lyric writing is as an art and true masters are poets. Not everyone can attain such lofty levels, but with a little time and the use of the above tips, it's possible to rise above the mediocre.
You should follow me on Twitter for daily news and updates on production and the music business.
Don't forget to check out my Music 3.0 blog for tips and tricks on navigating social media and the new music business.


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Creating a Theme for Nikola From Scratch (almost)
There is some documentation about creating themes for Nikola, but maybe a tutorial is also a useful way to explain it. So, here it is. I'll explain how to create a theme (almost) from scratch. Alternatively, you can take an existing theme and modify only parts of it via inheritance, but that's for another document.
I will try to create a theme that looks like Vinicius Massuchetto's Monospace Theme.


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Having devoured the Sherlock Holmes stories as a boy, I did what their author hoped and graduated to his much finer historical novels. The best of these, The White Company, appeared in 1890; it describes the recruitment and deployment of a detachment of Hampshire archers during the reign of King Edward III, a period that, as Arthur Conan Doyle phrased it, "constituted the greatest epoch in English History—an epoch when both the French and the Scottish kings were prisoners in London."
This book, it's of interest to note, also influenced Dwight Eisenhower's boyhood (I owe this information to the extraordinary Arthur Conan Doyle: A Life in Letters, edited by Jon Lellenberg, Daniel Stashower, and Charles Foley). For there came a time when this child of German-American parents also had to muster a considerable force from Hampshire headquarters, and launch them across the Channel in one of the greatest military interventions in history. Of course, on D-day, Eisenhower took care to have a French leader on his side (admittedly a turbulent and mutinous one), and Scottish regiments were as usual to the fore in the storming of the Atlantic Wall. But it's funny how one somehow can thrill to the same tradition, whether it's the medieval yeomen and bowmen of Anglo-Saxondom or the modern, mechanized, multinational coalition against fascism.
Doyle was only a few years from his first trip to the United States when he published The White Company, which he dedicated as follows: "To the hope of the future, the reunion of the English-speaking races, this little chronicle of our common ancestry is inscribed." Around the same time, two other renowned figures—Cecil Rhodes and Rudyard Kipling—made similar pitches. Two monuments, the Rhodes scholarships and the poem "The White Man's Burden," still survive in American life. The purpose of the scholarships was to proselytize for the return of the U.S. to the British imperial fold. The poem, written for Theodore Roosevelt, who passed it to Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, sought to influence the vote of the U.S. Senate on the annexation of the Philippines. (The poem's subtitle was "The United States and the Philippine Islands.") In urging the U.S. to pick up the scepter of empire, Kipling had one hope and one fear: hope of Anglo-American solidarity against rising German power; and fear of a revival of the demagogic atmosphere of 1894 and 1895, in which America and Britain almost went to war after the U.S., citing the Monroe Doctrine, intervened in a border dispute between Britain and Venezuela.
Doyle's visit coincided with the height of this anti-British feeling, and at a dinner in his honor in Detroit he had this to say:
You Americans have lived up to now within your own palings, and know nothing of the real world outside. But now your land is filled up, and you will be compelled to mix more with the other nations. When you do so you will find that there is only one which can at all understand your ways and your aspirations, or will have the least sympathy. That is the mother country which you are now so fond of insulting. She is an Empire, and you will soon be an Empire also, and only then will you understand each other, and you will realize that you have only one real friend in the world.
After Detroit, Doyle spent Thanksgiving with Kipling and his American wife, Carrie, in Brattleboro, Vermont. It is of unquantifiable elements such as this that the Anglo-American story, or the English-speaking story, is composed.
To a remarkable extent, Americans continue to assume a deep understanding with the English—one that, in their view, reflects a common heritage much more than it does anything as mundane as a common interest. This assumption, at least as exemplified in the Bush-Blair alliance that sent expeditionary forces to Afghanistan and Mesopotamia, has recently taken a severe bruising on both sides of the Atlantic, as well as north of the U.S. border and in the countries of the antipodes: the historical homelands of the "English-speaking" adventure. The conservative British historian Andrew Roberts, author of the important new book A History of the English-Speaking Peoples Since 1900, regards this as a matter of regret, as do I, though for different reasons. For no less different reasons, he and I believe that the "Anglosphere," to give it a recently updated name, may have a future as well as a past.
The idea is certainly in the air. Earlier this year, President Bush hosted a lunch for Roberts in the Oval Office, with senior advisors Karl Rove, Stephen Hadley, and Josh Bolten in attendance, and Dick Cheney was seen holding Roberts's book on a trip to Afghanistan. Other writers, including John O'Sullivan, have recently written about the unique virtues of Anglo-Americanism.
Roberts's book, though, exhibits some of the potential problems that can befall a defense of the Anglosphere. One shows up in its title. You will notice that Arthur Conan Doyle referred to the English-speaking "races." On the model of Winston Churchill's famous book of almost the same name, Roberts prefers the term "peoples." But this is to make a distinction without much difference. No such thing as an Australian or a Canadian "race" exists, so one either means to describe people of originally Anglo-Saxon "stock" (as we used to say) or one doesn't. It hasn't been very long since Lionel Trilling was denied tenure on the grounds, frankly stated, that a Jew could not understand English literature. Without an appreciation of the ways in which the language and ethnicity are quite distinct, a kind of imperialist nostalgia is likely.
Regrettably, Roberts doesn't always avoid such nostalgia, devoting a major portion of his book to vindicating episodes in the British colonial past that most Tories long ago ceased to defend. He represents General Reginald Dyer's massacre of protesters in the Indian city of Amritsar in 1919, for example, as a necessary law-and-order measure. He defends the catastrophic Anglo-French-Israeli invasion of Egypt in 1956: a folly that Eisenhower had to terminate. He writes leniently about the white settler regimes in southern Africa. And he never misses an opportunity to insult Irish nationalism, while whitewashing the Tory and Orange policies that led first to rebellion and second to bloody partition.
Determined to shoehorn everything into one grand theory, Roberts also flirts with tautology. For example, he mentions the opening of the Hoover Dam at Boulder City and comments: "The English-speaking peoples had long excelled at creating the wonders of the modern industrial world: the Great Eastern, the Brooklyn Bridge, the Sydney Bridge, the American, Canadian and Australian transcontinental railroads, the Panama Canal among them." A theory that tries to explain everything explains nothing: we can all think of other countries that have accomplished industrial and engineering marvels.
Further, the many advances in physics and medicine attributed to Jewish refugees in America (especially, for some reason, from Hungary) are slighted if credited to the genius of Englishness. Roberts describes radar as "another vital invention of the English-speaking peoples"—an insult to international scientific cooperation. One might add that Ferdinand de Lesseps did not shout orders in English when he organized the building of the Suez Canal. And Magna Carta wasn't written in English.
Nonetheless, properly circumscribed, the idea of an "Anglosphere" can constitute something meaningful. We should not commit the mistake of "thinking with the blood," as D. H. Lawrence once put it, however, but instead emphasize a certain shared tradition, capacious enough to include a variety of peoples and ethnicities and expressed in a language—perhaps here I do betray a bias—uniquely hostile to euphemisms for tyranny. In his postwar essay "Towards European Unity," George Orwell raised the possibility that the ideas of democracy and liberty might face extinction in a world polarized between superpowers but that they also might hope to survive in some form in "the English-speaking parts of it." English is, of course, the language of the English and American revolutions, whose ideas and values continue to live after those of more recent revolutions have been discredited and died.
Consider in this light one of Nelson Mandela's first acts as elected president of South Africa: applying to rejoin the British Commonwealth, from which South Africa had found itself expelled in the 1960s (by a British Tory government, incidentally) because of its odious racism. Many people forget that the Soweto revolt in the 1980s, which ultimately spelled apartheid's downfall, exploded after the Nationalist regime made the medium of school instruction exclusively Afrikaans, banning the classroom use of English, along with Xhosa and Zulu.
More recently, in July 2005, Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh came to Oxford University to receive an honorary degree and delivered a speech, not uncontroversial in India itself, in which he observed that many of India's splendors as a rising twenty-first-century superpower—from railroads to democracy to a law-bound civil service—were the result of its connection with England. "If there is one phenomenon on which the sun cannot set," Singh observed, "it is the world of the English-speaking peoples, in which the people of Indian origin are the single largest component." He added that the English language was a key element in the flourishing of India's high-tech sector. Few would have wanted to point this out, but it was Karl Marx who argued that India might benefit in this way from being colonized by England and not (and he spelled out the alternatives) Russia or Persia or Turkey.
We owe the term "Anglosphere" in large part to the historian and poet Robert Conquest, who this summer celebrated his 90th year of invincible common sense and courage in the fight against totalitarian thinking. In an appendix to his marvelous 2005 book The Dragons of Expectation: Reality and Delusion in the Course of History, he offers a detailed proposal for a broad Anglosphere alliance among the United States, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the Pacific Islands, and the Caribbean, with the multiethnic English-speaking island of Bermuda as the enterprise's headquarters. Though he unfortunately does not include India, he does find it "perfectly conceivable that other countries particularly close to our condition might also accede—for example Norway and Gambia, in each of which English is widely understood and in each of which the political and civic structure is close to that of the rest of the states." Quixotic as all this may sound, it probably understates the growing influence of English as a world language—the language of business and the Internet and air-traffic control, as well as of literature (or of literatures, given the emergence, first predicted by Orwell, of a distinct English written by Indians).
The shape of the world since September 11 has, in fact, shown the outline of such an alliance in practice. Everybody knows of Tony Blair's solidarity with the United States, but when the chips were down, Australian forces also went to Iraq. Attacked domestically for being "all the way with the USA," Australian prime minister John Howard made the imperishable observation that in times of crisis, there wasn't much point in being 75 percent a friend. Howard won reelection in 2004. Even in relatively neutralist Canada, an openly pro-U.S. government headed by Stephen Harper was elected in 2006, surprising pundits who predicted that a tide of anti-Americanism made such an outcome impossible.
Howard's statement has a great deal of history behind it. Roberts defines that history as an intimate alliance that defeated German Wilhelmine imperialism in 1918, the Nazi-Fascist Axis in 1945, and international Communism in 1989. This long arc of cooperation means that a young officer in, say, a Scottish regiment has a good chance of having two or even three ancestors who fought in the same trenches as did Americans and New Zealanders. No military force evolved by NATO, let alone the European Union, can hope to begin with such a natural commonality, the lack of which was painfully evident in Europe's post-1989 Balkan bungling (from which a largely Anglo-American initiative had to rescue it).
The world now faces a challenge from a barbarism that is no less menacing than its three predecessors—and may even be more so. And in this new struggle, a post-9/11 America came—not a moment too soon—to appreciate the vital fact that India had been fighting bin-Ladenism (and had been its target) far longer than we had. That fact alone should have mandated a change of alignment away from the chronically unreliable Pakistani regime that had used the Taliban as its colonial proxy in Afghanistan. But it helped that India was also a polyethnic secular democracy with a largely English-speaking military, political, and commercial leadership. We're only in the earliest stages of this new relationship, which so far depends largely on a nuclear agreement with New Delhi, and with the exception of Silicon Valley, the U.S. does not yet boast a politically active Indian population. But the future of American-Indian relations is crucial to our struggle against jihadism, as well as to our management of the balance of power with China.
In considering the future of the broader Anglosphere tradition, especially in the context of anti-jihadism, it may help to contrast it with the available alternatives. As a supranational body, the United Nations has obviously passed the point of diminishing returns. Inaugurated as an Anglo-American "coalition of the willing" against Hitler and his allies, the UN—in its failure to confront the genocides in Bosnia, Rwanda, and Darfur and in its abject refusal to enforce its own resolutions in the case of Iraq—is a prisoner of the "unilateralism" of France, Russia, and, to a lesser extent, China. NATO may have been somewhat serviceable in Kosovo (the first engagement in which it ever actually fought as an alliance), but it has performed raggedly in Afghanistan. The European Union has worked as an economic solvent on redundant dictatorships in Spain, Portugal, and Greece, and also on old irredentist squabbles in Ireland, Cyprus, and Eastern Europe. But it is about to reach, if it has not already, a membership saturation point that will disable any effective decision-making capacity. A glaring example of this disability is the EU's utter failure to compose a viable constitution. Roberts correctly notes that "along with over two centuries of amendments the entire (readable and easily intelligible) U.S. Constitution can be printed out onto twelve pages of A4-sized paper; the (unreadable and impenetrably complicated) proposed European Constitution ran to 265." (Roberts doesn't mention the lucidity and brevity of the British constitution, perhaps because the motherland of the English-speaking peoples has absentmindedly failed to evolve one in written form, and thus will, on the demise of the present queen, have as head of state a strange middle-aged man with a soft spot for Islam and bizarre taste in wives.)
But the temptation to construe the Anglosphere too narrowly persists. Another recent book, The Anglosphere Challenge, by James C. Bennett, expresses astonishment at the low price that the British establishment has put on its old Commonwealth and Dominion ties, and some hostility to the way in which European connections now take precedence. But viewed historically, it is surely neither surprising nor alarming that the British decided to reverse Winston Churchill's greatest mistake—abstaining from original membership in the European common market—and to associate more closely with the neighboring landmass. As Roberts himself concedes, Britain now enjoys a unique Atlanticist partnership along with full and energetic participation in the councils of the European Union.
For most of my adult life, British prime ministers were classifiable as either Atlanticist or European in orientation. Thus, the conservative Edward Heath fixated on Brussels and distrusted Washington, while the Labour leaders Harold Wilson and James Callaghan were Euro-isolationists and little better than dittos to presidents Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon, respectively. In fact, with the notable exception of Margaret Thatcher, the Anglo-American relationship has fared rather better under the British center-Left. Perhaps this has something to do with the old devotion of the British Left, from Thomas Paine onward, to the ideals of the American Revolution. Of the defenders of the liberation of Iraq in the British media and political spheres, for example, most of the best-known spokesmen—Nick Cohen of the Observer, the Financial Times's John Lloyd, and parliamentarians Denis MacShane, Peter Hain, and John Reid—belonged to the traditional Left. And it is many senior Conservatives who have recently gone the furthest in exploiting vulgar anti-American feeling among British voters. These are the ironies of history that Roberts's instinctive Toryism often prevents him from seeing.
An important thing to recognize about Tony Blair is that he was as much at home with American style and popular culture as he was when vacationing in France or Tuscany: that for the first time, the British had a prime minister who regarded the Atlanticist/European dichotomy as a false one. Nor did it hurt that on one day he could give a decent public speech in French and then on the next rally his party to identify its historical internationalism with the cause of the United States. He could even visit Dublin and claim some Irish descent, while offering a few conciliatory words about the wrongs of British policy since the Famine. And—not forgetting the Commonwealth and the Third World—he committed British forces to uphold a treaty with Sierra Leone and drove out the child-mutilating warlords who had invaded from Liberia.
This is quite a lot to set against the old Commonwealth tradition of Australian prime minister Sir Robert Menzies, who in the 1950s objected to being in the same "club" as newly independent African states and who forbade "colored" immigration to Australia itself. One of Roberts's Tory heroes, the late Enoch Powell, opposed immigration from nonwhite former colonies with the same fervor that he had once shown in opposing Indian independence. If he had stressed religion rather than race, he might have been seen as prescient; as it was, the majority of the British Right always openly favored Islamic Pakistan.
Today, the experience of true multicultural tolerance is something that needs defending, in Australia and Canada as much as in the U.K., against Islamist sectarianism and violence directed most virulently against Hindus and Jews. There is no way to fight this critical ideological battle on the imperial terrain of Kipling and Rhodes.
In late 1967, Britain's rule in Yemen ended, bringing an end to its centuries of presence "East of Suez." On the very last evening, the Labour defense minister Denis Healey shared a nostalgic sundowner with the British governor. As the shadows lengthened over the great harbor at Aden, the governor said that he thought the British Empire would be remembered for only two things: "the game of soccer and the expression 'fuck off.' " Who can doubt that these phenomena have endured and become part of the landscape of globalization? But the masochistic British attitude to inevitable decline seems to have reversed itself, at least to some extent. And the recent election of fresh governments in France and Germany shows that other Europeans—increasingly English-speaking—would rush to embrace the special American connection if, by any short-term miscalculation, the British might look to discard or vacate it.
Roberts's closing passage is his strongest. He gives a first-rate summary of the case for intransigent opposition to Islamist theocracy and to its cruel and violent epigones (as well as to its shady and illiterate apologists). He establishes all the essentials of the case for declaring our survival incompatible with totalitarianism and makes a crisp presentation of the urgency, necessity, and justice of the removal of Saddam Hussein. Along with William Shawcross's book Allies, his pages on this theme will find themselves consulted long after the ephemeral and half-baked antiwar texts are discredited and forgotten.
I myself doubt that a council of the Anglosphere will ever convene in the agreeable purlieus of postcolonial Bermuda, and the prospect of a formal reunion does not entice me in any case. It seems too close to the model on which France gravely convenes its own former possessions under the narrow banner of La Francophonie. It may not be too much to hope, though, that, along with soccer and a famously pungent injunction, some of the better ideas of 1649 and 1776 will continue to spread in diffuse, and ironic, ways.
Photo: goodpic/iStock


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Background and objectives | Agenda
Speakers' biographies (pdf)
Watch the conference sessions: Webcast archive
Follow on Twitter: #OECD_ICT
Information and communication technologies (ICTs) have put policy makers in a fast-changing environment, where new technologies and new businesses practices call for a continuous rethinking of their policies.
Over the last two years, the International Research Network on the Economic Impact of ICTs (ICTNET) has contributed to coordinate the economic research in some key policy areas. Financed by European Commission (DG Information Society and Media), the ICNET project has aimed at enhancing the coordination of the research in the economics of ICT in Europe. Its objective is to bring together leading researchers on the economics of information and communication technologies (ICT) in order to discuss recent scientific contributions and outstanding policy challenges.
ICTNET project is organised around four main work packages:
Eight workshops were organised in Parma, Mannheim and London in the course of 2011 and 2012 to address key questions related to each of these work packpages with the participation of academic researchers, private sector decision makers and policy makers. More information about the different research areas and workshops is available on the ICTNET website.
This final ICTNET conference aimed to offer the main conclusions of this work to the discussion by policy-makers. The conference was organised around the topics at the core of the ICT policy agenda worldwide. Each session brought together representatives from the policy arena and the research community. Policy makers discussed the areas where more economic evidence and analysis is needed to support ICT policies. Economists addressed these policy questions based on the findings of their ongoing research.
The conference aimed to provide policy makers with evidence and tools to measure the economic impact of ICTs, assess the effectiveness of their current policies and feed into the ICT policy agenda for the years to come.
All sessions were moderated by Mr. Romesh Vaitilingam
The diffusion of ICT has been the major driver of productivity and growth over the last two decades. However, countries, industries and firms continue to show significant differences both in the intensity of ICT use and in their capability to reap the productivity gains from ICTs.
Several studies show that cross-country differences in the diffusion of ICTs are largely related to market regulation. In particular, tighter regulation in the labour and product markets seems negatively associated to the productivity gains from ICTs whereas countries with higher flexibility tend to benefit more from ICTs. They also suggest that policies should promote product market competition, faster adjustment in labour market and openness to trade.
Complementary to regulation, there is increasing attention to the active role that governments may play through new industrial policies. The objective of these policies is not to "pick winners" in ICT industries but to help all firms to benefit from the knowledge spillovers generated by ICT networks.
Policy makers
In recent years, intangible assets have gained a prominent position in the agendas of researchers and policy-makers alike. As part of the increasing interest for intangible assets, ICTs have received a special attention.
Successful adoption and use of ICTs by businesses require complementary investments in intangibles, like training, management and organization. Iconic companies, such as Microsoft and Google, are renowned for owning relatively little tangible capital and for placing high importance on the skills and creativity of their employees.
Computerized information (software and databases) accounts for a significant proportion of total intangibles. The data gathered on the purchase preferences of e-customers has become a business asset for on-line retailers. And ICTs themselves are increasing the economic value of information.
The increasing importance of intangible assets raises significant challenges for policy in areas such as taxation, competition, intellectual property rights, corporate reporting and privacy. Governments are called to play a key role in addressing potential market failures that may hamper investments in intangibles assets, particularly in software and digital data.
Policy makers
ICTs appear as a major driver of innovation. They have the potential to increase innovation by speeding up the diffusion of information, favouring networking among firms, enabling closer links between businesses and customers, reducing geographic limitations, and increasing efficiency in communication.
Fulfilling the innovative potential of ICTs requires a transformation by both companies and policymakers that has just begun. Success with this transformation would start with a clearer understanding of what ICTs can do and what it is working in leading firms and sectors.
Public policies need to ensure that incentives to innovation are aligned across the economy, that education promotes creativity and that the quality of ICT infrastructure is adequate to support innovation.
Policy makers
ICTs, employment and growth: the way to recovery?
In the current context of low growth and high unemployment, many governments regard ICTs as a key channel to foster growth and generate new jobs. While ICTs are creating new markets and boosting existing industries, particularly services, they are also reducing employment in traditional industries and occupations. As a result, their overall contribution to employment and growth remains unclear.
The role of policies to support growth potential of ICTs also requires further investigation. Should policies directly support ICT investments in order to create new markets and new jobs? Or should they be targeted on the development of ICT skills in the workforce? More generally, should ICT-specific policies have a priority over broader, well-established macroeconomic policies?
Policy makers
Related Documents


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Create a Website Account - Manage notification subscriptions, save form progress and more.
Show All Answers
The use of alcohol and other drugs has been linked to a variety of negative consequences, especially for youth. Substance use can lead to:
Teens' decision to drink alcohol or use other drugs is influenced by:
To help prevent teen drug use, you can:
Remember, it doesn't need to be one big talk. It's better to do multiple small talks.
If you are experiencing an emergency, call 911.
Finger Lakes Area Counseling & Recovery Agency (FLACRA)
Watkins Glen Outpatient Clinic
Mill Creek Center, 106 S Perry St Watkins Glen, NY 14891
Addictions Crisis Line: 315-462-9466
24/7 Opioid Response Team: 833-435-2272
New York State Office of Alcoholism and Substance Abuse Services (OASAS)
24/7 HOPEline: 1-877-8-HOPENY (1-877-846-7369) or Text HopeNY: 467369
SAMHSA's National Helpline
Treatment Services Locator
In April 2006, concerned community members came together to form the Schuyler County Commission on Underage Drinking (SCCUD) in response to:
The coalition originally focused on reducing alcohol availability, improving the effectiveness of law enforcement, and changing social norms. Early activities included:
In 2012, the coalition entered into a Drug-Free Communities Mentoring Grant with Tompkins County's Community Coalition for Healthy Youth (CCHY). With CCHY's guidance, the coalition expanded its focus to include other drugs and updated its name from the Schuyler County Commission on Underage Drinking (SCCUD) to the Schuyler County Coalition on Underage Drinking and Drugs (SCCUDD). The coalition also worked on updating its by-laws and structure, increasing coalition capacity through education and skill-building trainings, and conducted focus groups with community youth to further understand the drug-related social norms and issues facing youth.In October 2014, SCCUDD was awarded a federal Drug-Free Communities Support Grant by the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). This five-year grant secured federal resources to reduce youth use of alcohol and other drugs by supporting community-driven solutions.
As a Drug-Free Communities Support Grant recipient, SCCUDD works to increase community collaboration and reduce youth substance use by employing the Seven Strategies for Effective Community Change:


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Kanger EVOD Starter Kit
The Kanger Evod Starter Kit is the perfect e-cigarette to get you started. It's our best seller when it comes to first timers and also great for more seasoned vapers. It's amazingly simple one button design makes it extremely easy to use whilst still providing outstanding performance.
*Atomizer capacity: 1.6ml / 500 puffs (replaceable heating coil)
*Battery capacity: 650mAh
*Switch: click button 5 times to turn on/off
What's included:
5 x bottom heating coil heads (2.2 ohms)
2 x EVOD batteries
2 x EVOD clearomizers
1 x USB charger
1 x User manual
All e-cigs, e-liquids are for Adults over 18 years only!
Important Note:
There are inherent risks attached to the use of all rechargeable batteries. Special caution must be applied when working with Li-on or any other type of rechargeable batteries. They are extremely sensitive to charging characteristics and may cause serious injury, damage, or defect resulting from the improper use, modification, mishandling or misuse of the batteries or battery chargers in any form or shape at any stage of transportation or use. User must have knowledge on the charging, discharging, assembly and storage of these batteries before use. Use at your own risk!
Safety Precautions:
- This battery is not protected and must be used with special caution
- Always only use chargers that are deemed safe by relevant authorities
- Do not use if any visible damage/ defect is present on battery or charger
- Do not use if battery or charger is possibly stressed from any form of modification, improper use, misuse or mishandling even if stress/ damage/ defect is not visible
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- Always charge on/ in a heat resistant, non-conductive and fire-proof surface
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- Dispose of all batteries and chargers in accordance to local laws and regulations
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Vaporlane websites and any and all of Vaporlane's related entities are not responsible for any temporary or permanent damage, injury or defect resulting from the improper use, modification, misuse or mishandling of the batteries and /or chargers in any form or shape at any stage of use or transport.


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This has nothing to do with archaeology. It was just one of the best concerts I have got to see.
View the original Post by Alejandro Escovedo.
Kristy and I don't get out to see live music much but I was excited to see my favorite still undiscovered by pop culture artist Alejandro Escovedo earlier this year.


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I sometimes hear strange noises while watching TV, or else no sound comes out.
If there is a new TV software available, please download the new software and update the TV.
Follow these steps to perform the software update.
- Press the HOME button on the remote control.
- Select Settings.
- Select Customer Support.
- Select Software Update.
- Select Network.
NOTE: Try the following for a temporary solution.
- Try turning the TV off then on again with the remote control.
- Try changing the TV channel or changing to another input mode.


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The Search Files tool gives you a convenient way of performing searches on directories, individual files or systems. You can create a Search Files tool by choosing
Tools > Search Files
or clicking
in the Podium or use the keyboard accelerator described in Displaying tools using the keyboard. You can also start context-dependent searches, for example by choosing
Edit > Search Files...
Works > Systems > Search Files...
, or from editor command such as
Search Files
Out of necessity, this chapter makes some references to other tools in the environment which you may not yet be familiar with. However, this chapter does not assume any prior knowledge of these tools.
Figure 16.1 The Search Files tool
The Search Files tool has the following areas:
LispWorks IDE User Guide (Windows version) - 25 Nov 2011


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NEW YORK (Reuters) - Makers of the new James Bond movie "Skyfall" have striven to combine the old-school values that made 007 such a success over the last 50 years with enough modern mores to keep the silver screen's favorite super spy relevant in a post-Cold War world.
The 23rd official Bond film, which has its royal world premiere in London on Tuesday, brings together Daniel Craig on his third outing on Her Majesty's secret service with British director Sam Mendes making his franchise debut.
The plot also puts veteran actress Judi Dench, 77, at the heart of the action as Bond's superior M, and introduces Spanish Oscar-winner Javier Bardem as an uncharacteristically flamboyant villain complete with dyed blond hair.
Marking 50 years after the first Bond film "Dr. No" premiered on London in 1962, Skyfall pays homage to Bond's gadgets, his taste in fast cars and beautiful women and introduces enough humor to lighten the tone.
But it also seeks to show why the modern Bond is still relevant in a world where technology is as important to international spy networks as human beings.
"He was a product of his time and we live in a different time and I hope this movie reflects the time we live in," Mendes told reporters at a recent publicity briefing.
He said the film served to answer questions about the relevance of Britain's foreign intelligence agency (MI6) and the Bond character now that the Cold War is over.
"We are talking about old values, which is what the movie argues for -- honor, trust, friendship, courage -- and in a way it is deeply old fashioned in its values," Mendes said.
The tension between current intelligence gathering methods which rely more on satellites and computer hacking than Bond's traditional sleuthing approach adds a degree of tension to the 23rd outing for the fictional spy character created by author Ian Fleming, Craig told Reuters in an interview.
"Bond is very much within the old camp, which is that you have got to go and look people in the eye and ask them questions directly. And there we have the clash of the worlds," Craig said.
In Skyfall, which features a new theme song performed by Adele, Bond travels between Istanbul, Shanghai and London as his loyalty to M is tested when her past comes back to haunt her, while MI6 comes under attack from an unknown threat.
Craig as the modern Bond gives the audience snippets of vulnerability that counter the all-knowing cockiness of past Bonds. In Skyfall, he quickly learns he is dispensable, growing older and forced to face the ghosts of his childhood.
"He is a complicated character and that is worth looking at," the 44-year-old Craig said, adding that even after his first Bond outing, "Casino Royale", and then "Quantum of Solace", released four years ago, he was still discovering the layers of Bond.
"I try to sort of hint at it, as opposed to exploring it."
Bond's famed smooth charm, and his willingness to use women for personal gratification have earned him his fair share of critics over the years. But fans will still recognize the Bond of old, Craig said.
"Women are there to satisfy him, I think he still believes that. But if we put strong women in front of him, then there is going to be some friction.
"But I kind of have to cling onto his chauvinism a bit, because I think it makes things more interesting."
Audiences can't "be too PC about it," said Craig, "It's a gag. Everybody has got the gag for this long. We understand the gag. It's about making sparks, you want sparks. Death is sexy. Danger is sexy. It's all about getting those elements into it."
The pressure of marking the 50th anniversary of one of cinema's most recognisable characters and valuable properties was pushed to the background during filming, according to Craig.
This year has already seen exhibitions, auctions, a documentary and plenty of merchandising to mark the cultural phenomenon that is Bond.
The film suffered a delay due to financial troubles at studio MGM, allowing for several script rewrites.
"It was in the back of our minds," Craig said, adding that the joke on set was that Skyfall might be a huge flop spelling the end of the franchise after five decades.
Instead, the movie tries to emulate the slick costume design and style of those 1960s Bond films, including bringing back the Aston Martin DB5.
"I remember going to see Bond movies and being transported somewhere and that was what we aimed for on this," Craig said. "It picks up things from those early movies."
Critics in Britain have praised "American Beauty" director Mendes for stronger characters and letting dramatic moments in the film breathe.
The film is released in Britain on Friday and on November 4 in the United States. The 22 Bond films have made around $5 billion at the box office.
Like the franchise, Craig said he will be "pushing 50" when he has completed the next two Bond films under his contract and promised to "completely" call it quits.
In the meantime, "If you find yourself being bored of playing James Bond, then you are really ready to give up," he said.
(Reporting By Christine Kearney, editing by Mike Collett-White and Paul Casciato)


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Interesting concept! I guess it was only a matter of time.....
http://gizmodo.com/5623136/using-wi+fi- ... your-phoneBy loading software onto its vehicles through Wi-Fi, Ford expects to save millions. But this technology could be used to provide drivers the option of handpicking their car's features, much like apps do for smartphones.
Wi-Fi was first introduced in Ford vehicles with SYNC, its voice activated system that turns your car into a roving Wi-Fi hotspot. Now, Wi-Fi is being used for a new application in their Oakville, Ontario plant: to install phone and entertainment features in the production line of select vehicles. Loading the software this way has resulted in a less than 1% failure rate so far, and it has reduced labor costs since it's hands-free.
But what's most interesting about this method of transmitting software is its potential for customization. By wirelessly programming cars, drivers could set details like how quickly the transmission shifts gears, choose power-seat preferences, or a hundred other little personalizations that would make your vehicle unique. Currently, they have a common programmable electronic component that would provide over 90 such options.
It's the perfect solution for automakers, who want to provide their customers with unique vehicles without spending a fortune assembling all those different vehicles. The system is not without fault, though—the car's electronics could become susceptible to hackers, viruses, or unforeseen errors. Luckily, Ford is starting this process exclusively with infotainment, so there's no chance that your car's controls will be hijacked by some teen maliciously coding from their parent's basement. [WSJ


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Kathy Griffin
Kathy Griffin moved from her native Chicago and joined the famed Los Angeles Groundlings Theatre where she was a student and later a teacher. Kathy built up her resume doing guest spots on ER, X-Files, and Seinfeld where she developed the recurring character 'Sally Weaver'. Kathy went on to co-star alongside Brook Shields in Suddenly Susan, which ran for four years on NBC. In 2005 Kathy entered the world of reality TV with her double Emmy winning show Kathy Griffin: My Life on the D List for Bravo. Her stand up specials Kathy Griffin: Straight to Hell (November 2008), Kathy Griffin: She'll Cut a Bitch (April 2009), and Kathy Griffin: Tired Hooker (December 2011) were all nominated for an Emmy in the category Outstanding Variety, Music, or Comedy Special. Kathy's memoir Official Book Club was # 1 on the New York Times best seller list. Kathy's comedy albums For Your Consideration (2008), Kathy Griffin's Sucking it for the Holidays (2009), Kathy Griffin Does the Bible Belt (2010), and Kathy Griffin: 50 and Not Pregnant (2011) have all been nominated for Grammys. Kathy received rave reviews on Broadway for her one woman show Kathy Griffin Wants a Tony. Kathy is the recipient of the 'GLAAD Vanguard Award,' received the Trevor Project's 'Lifetime Achievement Award,' and 'Ally for Equality Award' from the Human Rights Campaign.